Support for Alternative Layouts
This is a summary of how alternative layouts have been supported by kits such as Colevrak and Homing. It is not a discussion of alt layout performance and development, but if that interests you I highly recommend starting with Pascal Getreuer’s A guide to alt keyboard layouts (why, how, which one?). It’s a concise and comprehensive overview with links to some great sites that go deeper. He also has a separate Links about keyboards page. The Keyboard layouts doc he recommends explains layout goals and metrics in detail, summarizing the alt layouts discussed here as well as more than one hundred others. Sculpted-profile The majority of custom keycap sets are sculpted-profile (Cherry, SA, MT3, KAT, etc. - more on profiles generally here) so let’s start there. Because each row has a unique keycap shape, alt layouts require a unique keycap for each legend that moves off its QWERTY row. At first there were two The Dvorak layout was patented in 1936 by August Dvorak & William L....
Apr 23, 2024
April 21st Update: There's one last color sample that we're waiting for final approval from MiTo from, and tracking shows that it should get to him in Brazil tomorrow. Assuming he OK's it, we're finally good on colors. There were a few legends that needed some tweaking, stroke sizes on some of the novelties, and some alignments that we've requested to be redone so that they're just right. Assuming everything gets confirmed this week, we're expecting the keycaps to be done around May 20th, and they'll get air-shipped to us by the end of May, and shipped to you in early June. I'm hoping to have more photos of the most recent sample set to post later this week. Thanks for hanging in there everyone! June 11th Update: All colors for the keycaps have been approved by MiTo. We are waiting on one last round of sampling to get MiTo’s approval on the legends before we go into production. There has been a lot of back and forth between MiTo and the factory with both parties working extremely hard to produce keycaps of the highest quality. Here is MiTo’s post for reference. Currently, we are estimating that MiTo should be receiving the next round of samples beginning of July, after which the factory will be producing the entire run. We can provide a better estimate on delivery date after this new round of samples are okayed. Conservative estimates would put us shipping these keycaps end of July/beginning of August. I’ll provide another update with firm delivery dates once this next set of sampling is finished. July 31 Update: Mito should be posting an update with photos in the coming days. September 3rd Update: These are scheduled to ship from the manufacturer on September 15th. Given the usual transit times, I expect these to be in our warehouse and shipping to individuals by September 29th, but will update here if anything changes. September 23rd update: These were picked up from the manufacturer on Sept 21st, and are making their way to the USA now. New ship date is probably around Oct 6th. Will post another update as soon as they arrive at our warehouse. October 2nd Update: These are shipping now! Extras going on sale around 10/10 October 14th Update: Most people have received their orders by now. Please leave a review and a photo if you get a chance! We're aware of the issue with the FJ5 homing keys being scooped+barred, instead of separately, and we're talking to the manufacturer to get a fix kit made (i.e. extra, proper, keycaps will be mailed out to all participants when they're available/ready). Since we need to make these fix kits, we'll unfortunately have to delay the sale of the extras until the fix kits are ready, and we'll sell extras (with the fix kits attached). Trying to get an ETA on the fix kits in the next few days. Nov 22nd Update: They're working on making the homing keys, and once we get them, we'll ship them (for free) to everyone who pre-ordered a set of Pegaso. The manufacturing pipeline is jammed right now with other keycap designs so we're trying to get space for our tiny project/request. Exact ETA is unknown, but hopefully by the end of the year. Nov 23rd Update: Extras of the Pegaso keycaps will be put up for sale in the next day or so. There's about 250 base kits of extras available. Base kits will not include the "extra" homing keys (that are missing from pre-orders), but they should be available for sale for $5 per set when we get them. Note you don't need them, there are already other homing keys included in the base kit.